Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Scandal of the USA's Somalia Aid Blockade

The US is playing politics with the lives of starving children

Last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged members of the al-Shabaab militia - the Islamist group who control 60% of famine-hit Somalia - to allow aid in. Just as in Libya, crocodile tears and hand-wringing over supposedly 'humanitarian' concerns mask predatory imperialist interests.

Somalia is located in East Africa, which is facing a food crisis following the worst droughts in sixty years. There has been no functioning central government in the country since the Somali Civil War broke out twenty years ago, when the US removed its support for dictator Siad Barre. Most of the country is currently presided over by al-Shabaab, who the western media routinely link to al-Qaeda, though the US government's own National Counterterrorism Center has found no organisational links. The US backs its rivals in the so-called Transitional Federal Government, which is more open to western interests than al-Shabaab.

More than "terrorists" gaining control of an African country, the US and its allies fear the loss of a strategically important location to Chinese influence. Though Somalia is not particularly rich in oil, gas or mineral resources, it lies at a major crossroads of world trade by sea and air.

In the recent period, the biggest intervention of US imperialism into Somalia happened in 1992, when outgoing president George Bush Snr sent thirty thousand American troops into the country, on the pretext of providing aid. His successor Bill Clinton faced a humiliation two years later, when he was forced to pull troops out after the battle that was misleadingly portrayed in Black Hawk Down.

Dictator Siad Barre was successfully courted by US imperialism in the 1980s

Now, as famine grips the region, the Obama administration sees a potential opportunity to re-establish US hegemony. In her speech last week Hillary Clinton stated that: "The relentless terrorism by al-Shabaab against its people has turned an already severe situation into a dire one that is only expected to get worse”. Even by the standards of imperial realpolitik, this is staggering hypocrisy.